Guild Wars 2

Full disclosure: I love playing a Mesmer. I love shatters and I love phantasms. I want them to be useful, but I’m also willing to acknowledge that we’re capable of some unfair things and that ArenaNet is likely reluctant to split skills and conditions more than necessary.

What I mean to say is I’m biased and I’m willing to admit it.

Two of the most common complaints I’ve heard about Mesmers are:

• Mesmers can do too much damage without breaking stealth because of phantasms.
• Confusion is useless in PvE because enemies attack too slowly for the damage to be relevant.

I’ve got two suggestions that might help with these. One is an effective PvP nerf that won’t hurt us in PvE, while the other involves splitting Confusion between PvP and PvE versions—and not in the way you think.

Phantasms and Stealth. My suggestion: lower the damage that phantasms do and increase the damage that Mesmer weapon skills do. In effect, this would leave us with similar overall DPS, but would just “move” some of our damage from phantasms onto our more active weapon skills. This would help in PvP because it would lower the amount of damage we can do without breaking stealth (our passive damage), but it wouldn’t lower the overall amount of DPS we can do—it just makes it more active. An added benefit is that this remains under the Mesmer’s control. Other possible fixes—that phantasms disappear when the Mesmer stealths or that phantasm attacks break stealth on the Mesmer—would remove control from the Mesmer’s hands. EDIT: I’m saying that’s a bad thing, by the way—illusions shouldn’t go away on stealth at all. This suggestion keeps the ball in our court while also helping to fix something that is, quite honestly, pretty unfair.

Confusion Splitting. My suggestion: double the base duration of the Confusion condition in PvE, but not in PvP. As it stands, the damage that Confusion does in PvP is high (but avoidable), but in PvE it’s low because it’s hard to get more than one “tick” out of it. If a Mesmer wants to use it at all, he or she has to be devoted to keeping Confusion stacks up—solely—using every Confusion-causing skill and combo available, and the DPS just isn’t high enough to warrant that. Increasing Confusion’s PvE duration without increasing its damage stops the condition from being too “spiky” while simultaneously making it do meaningful damage to slow-attacking PvE enemies.

Interestingly, I think both of these suggested changes would work together to increase build variety in PvE. Right now, pure phantasm builds are far more popular in PvE than pure shatter builds. The damage that phantasms can do—and the lack of damage that our weapon skills can do—combined with the weakness of the Confusion condition make shatter builds unattractive. We can do so much damage passively, why should we bother trying more active means that will only do less damage? If our active damage skills did more damage and our passive ones did less, phantasm builds remain attractive (for Sharper Images builds, support builds where your phantasms can do damage while you support, and others) and shatter-based builds become much more attractive than they are now.

I get what your saying, I do. However, I would be obstinately opposed to reducing the damage on phantasms.

Why you ask? Phantasms are supposed to be a source of high damage for us. Thats their purpose, to do damage. They are fine the way they are.

What we need is a buff to mind wrack’s shatter damage. Currently, the damage is very low, even when traited. It needs a little bit of a buff.

iCryptik.1496:

I get what your saying, I do. However, I would be obstinately opposed to reducing the damage on phantasms.

Why you ask? Phantasms are supposed to be a source of high damage for us. Thats their purpose, to do damage. They are fine the way they are.

I agree that phantasms should do damage. I’m definitely not suggesting that they go down to clone damage levels—that’d be foolish. I just think that some of their damage could be “moved” to weapon skills. They’d still do damage, and a worthwhile amount of it at that, just not enough that they can (or should) serve as our primary damage source (which they, quite frankly, are right now, regardless of how we build).

Stealth is part of the Mesmer class. It would be rediculous to lose all your illusions if you go in stealth. The class it’s self is the art of deception. How would you deceive or confuse anybody if all your illusions popped? Horrible idea.

I’ve got an idea. How about we remove and/or nerf every mesmer ability and give them a giant gun w/ 0 cooldown that does 15k damage. We will call it the iwinbutton.
That’s about as rediculous as your ideas.

I’m forced to assume you didn’t read anything in my post. Nowhere did I suggest that illusions should go away when we stealth. In fact, I’m pretty sure I said that’s a bad idea. Very specifically.

iCryptik may be you didn`t traited deep enought?

Although I don’t like your phantasm idea, I do feel that something needs to be done about Confusion in PvE. Similar stuff to it in Guild Wars 1 (like the Mesmer skill “Empathy”) were far more useful in PvE than in Guild Wars 2, because the enemies in GW2 attack too slowly. Personally I never use it in PvE and I’m surprised anyone does, because frequently you’ll shatter all three phantasms and the condition will wear off before the enemy attacks, even once!

Not so sure about doubling the damage, but it would be a solution of sorts.

Its like saying conditions shouldnt work while their creator is stealthed or pets shouldn’t attack while stealthed. Plain silly.

Confusion should work slightly differently, but its not that bad. Primary advantage of confusion in pve is that its applied in aoe mostly, which means multiple enemies will be hit. Terrible against champions though.

Kutai.4971:

Although I don’t like your phantasm idea, I do feel that something needs to be done about Confusion in PvE. Similar stuff to it in Guild Wars 1 (like the Mesmer skill “Empathy”) were far more useful in PvE than in Guild Wars 2, because the enemies in GW2 attack too slowly. Personally I never use it in PvE and I’m surprised anyone does, because frequently you’ll shatter all three phantasms and the condition will wear off before the enemy attacks, even once!

Not so sure about doubling the damage, but it would be a solution of sorts.

Doubling the duration, not the damage. While it would in EFFECT double the damage that Confusion can do, it wouldn’t double speed at which that damage is done.

To put this into perspective: an eight-stack of Confusion does about as much damage when it ticks as a single swing of a Warrior’s greatsword. It takes much more effort to accomplish. If the condition’s base duration were significantly increased in PvE only, its damage would go from “unusable” to “actually worth using.”

Rogacz.9865:

Its like saying conditions shouldnt work while their creator is stealthed or pets shouldn’t attack while stealthed. Plain silly.

Confusion should work slightly differently, but its not that bad. Primary advantage of confusion in pve is that its applied in aoe mostly, which means multiple enemies will be hit. Terrible against champions though.

The difference is that conditions don’t do the kind of damage phantasms do and can be removed much more easily than phantasms can (and usually without consequences—killing a phantasm placed by a decent Mesmer will get you crippled and conditioned). And Rangers can’t dance around in stealth like a Mesmer can.

I’m not saying that phantasms should behave differently while the Mesmer is stealthed than they do while the Mesmer is revealed, but that phantasms should do about 25% less damage across the board, while Mesmer weapon skills should do about 25% more damage across the board. Please note I just pulled these numbers out of the air and they’re not at all my real suggestion. But it would makes us more reliant on our direct, active damage sources—the kind that break stealth, our weapon skills—while letting phantasms function as secondary damage sources. Not a PvE nerf, but a mild PvP one that doesn’t actually decrease the amount of damage we can do—it just moves it around.

I don’t understand why you’re so concerned with stealth on mesmers right now. Sure we have a few different stealth skills, but anyone that would use all of them in a single build is seriously g.imping their own potential by doing so.

Almost every other skill slot has options that are way more effective. In fact the only stealth that I think is worthwhile is decoy while the rest are pretty useless. I guess I could understand you’re issue with it when the the Prestige was bugged giving mesmers almost endless stealth, but that issue was fixed weeks ago.

For someone to be saying that mesmers are ‘dancing around in stealth’ almost makes me wonder if and how much time you have actually spent playing them because someone that sits the entire fight in stealth will likely lose his phantasms and not be winning any 1v1’s.

edit: g. imp is a filtered word???

Sleaze.3748:

I don’t understand why you’re so concerned with stealth on mesmers right now. Sure we have a few different stealth skills, but anyone that would use all of them in a single build is seriously g.imping their own potential by doing so.

Almost every other skill slot has options that are way more effective. In fact the only stealth that I think is worthwhile is decoy while the rest are pretty useless. I guess I could understand you’re issue with it when the the Prestige was bugged giving mesmers almost endless stealth, but that issue was fixed weeks ago.

For someone to be saying that mesmers are ‘dancing around in stealth’ almost makes me wonder if and how much time you have actually spent playing them because someone that sits the entire fight in stealth will likely lose his phantasms and not be winning any 1v1’s.

edit: g. imp is a filtered word???

Apparently it is.

Anyway, I’m just trying to address two complaints: one that I have, and one that others have. Obviously the Mesmer isn’t going to spend their entire time in stealth—that’s ridiculous. But the fact that we can do so much damage without breaking our stealth has a lot of PvPers frothing at the mouth for us to be nerfed into the ground. I’m just trying to offer a suggestion or what I think is an inevitable nerf that won’t actually hurt our damage or hurt is in PvE.

In fact, I think it would help us in PvE. If we were less reliant on phantasms for our damage output, many people would be less reluctant to shatter their phantasms. Phantasm-based builds could still be popular—it’s great that we can do passive damage while focusing our attention on supporting, especially in dungeons—but it would help encourage people to experiment with shatter-based builds as well. Combined with a buff to Confusion’s PvE duration, I think we’d see a lot better build variety.

I have no idea why you wouldn’t be shattering every chance you got… I am not traited for shattering but I use free extra damage and debuffs whenever I get the chance. Whenever my phantasm comes off cool down I send them in kamikazee style and immediately pop up the replacement team once they go boom. Takes me maybe 5 seconds to replace my two clones and phantasm if I don’t want to burn my mirror image.

I don’t see where the complaints are based but I haven’t played mesmer for long and I don’t have much expertise in pvp. As for stealth, cheap tactic yes, but they are trading in dps for survivability. And as far as I can tell with goofing around, almost all the phantasms attack at range/are stationary for a bit of their attack cycle. Pick them off from range in the down time if you are worried about on death effects. If players are kittening themselves with only a melee speck I fail to see why I should take pity on the fool (I don’t even use stealth build). All builds come with strengths and weaknesses. All builds have trade offs. Nail them in their weakness.

As far as I can tell with pesky stealth users, just nuke the area with AoE and keep your head on a swivel for when mesmer pops out of stealth to use abilities or recast. Or buddy up, two heads are better than one.

Phantasms are ridiculously OP. I’ve played all of one day with a GS/Sw/P mesmer and I never had to enter a fight I didn’t want to. Just send in phantasm after phantasm and let them do the work hitting people for 5k at a time while my easy-tracking-AA drops another 2-4k on them. Never once did I feel like using the shatter mechanic was a good idea. It’s basically all AI while I sit back and enjoy the show.

Portal for treb repair. So far beyond OP I don’t even have words.
10 Sec haste that just so happens to have a radius large enough to cover an entire node. Nothing more need be said…
Basically every Ele cantrip but with half the CD times… that actually pisses me off, as my main is an Ele.

I haven’t even tried all the skills yet. Each one just makes me laugh harder than the previous since I’m constantly finding ridiculous things I can do with them that no other class can.

Mesmers gonna get nerfed hard. Bet on it.

We know Mesmers are going to get nerfed. That’s why I’m suggesting changes that will bring us more in line with other professions in PvP without crippling us in PvE (which, to be honest, is what’s probably going to happen).

So:

• Move some damage off of phantasms and onto weapon skills so that Mesmers have to be more active.
• Increase the duration of Confusion in PvE only so that shatter-based builds are more practical as a method of dealing damage.

As for Portal, I’ve read so far that changes under consideration include making the repair kit unable to go through a Portal and making Portals unable to go through walls. Of course that second change pretty much removes the rest of the skill’s usefulness, but that’s how MMORPGs work I guess.

But Portal isn’t the topic of this thread. So. Anyway.

hackks.3687:

Mesmers gonna get nerfed hard. Bet on it.

You know, you’re probably right. I mean, Mesmer is the least played class in the game, according to ANet. Also one of the slowest levelers, less mobile than most others, with less reliable AoE. But hey, let’s nerf the crap out of it!

Sabbathius.1465:

hackks.3687:

Mesmers gonna get nerfed hard. Bet on it.

You know, you’re probably right. I mean, Mesmer is the least played class in the game, according to ANet. Also one of the slowest levelers, less mobile than most others, with less reliable AoE. But hey, let’s nerf the crap out of it!

strange considering they’re everywhere in PvP and must-haves for competitive tPvP teams.

I’d be curious to see how you fair as any other light, or even medium, armor class. Facerolling with Mesmer is pretty kitten easy.

Mesmers break Anets idea of being able to bring any class into an spvp team.. as every team NEEDS a mesmer.

Agent Noun.7350:

We know Mesmers are going to get nerfed. That’s why I’m suggesting changes that will bring us more in line with other professions in PvP without crippling us in PvE (which, to be honest, is what’s probably going to happen).

So:

• Move some damage off of phantasms and onto weapon skills so that Mesmers have to be more active.
• Increase the duration of Confusion in PvE only so that shatter-based builds are more practical as a method of dealing damage.

As for Portal, I’ve read so far that changes under consideration include making the repair kit unable to go through a Portal and making Portals unable to go through walls. Of course that second change pretty much removes the rest of the skill’s usefulness, but that’s how MMORPGs work I guess.

But Portal isn’t the topic of this thread. So. Anyway.

OK, I’ll let the portal thing go for now…

I will say that I really like the clone concept for Mesmers and it’s really more of what I had in mind for the class when I picked it up. Clones of myself creating mass confusion, but minimal dmg/utility till I decide shatter. Far more engaging, still plenty complex, but not so ezmode as just flinging AI at the opposition and eating popcorn.

And to be honest, when they do bring the nerf bat, I really hope they don’t over do it. The class concept is awesome and a kitten ton of fun to play. In a lot of ways it should be considered a benchmark for class performance. There still needs some addressing on CDs and skill durations and what not to bring a little more parity with the rest of the classes. Hopefully they don’t get totally gutted in the process. I’m actually having a lot of fun with the class. Even though I feel really dirty for playing it in it’s current state.

The problem with Phantasms is that too many function as dots and the ones that don’t function as dots perform poorly (iMage).

By making them Damage over Time ghosts, they vary only in power and that power becomes an issue in relation to both play balance and with the shatter mechanic’s viability. If Phantasms did more nuanced things then they could still be powerful while not creating so many problems. The way the traited Warden reflects damage is sort of the thing I’m talking about here. The Phantasmal Defender would be another example of this if not for the shattering issue.

Basically, there’s this balancing act where if you lower Phantasm damage and increase weapon damage, then everyone will start to go Shatter build. If you empower Phantasm damage then people don’t shatter and the Mesmer doesn’t have to fight itself. If Phantasms provided more interesting benefits than just damage then you start to move away from this problem.

But right now too many function as DoTs that don’t require the Mesmer to remain active for their benefit. It’s not just a problematic design, but a boring one to be honest.

the big problem with moving phantasm damage to the mesmer is that the weapon skills mesmer’s have are SO. BORING. in terms of non-illusion based damage. 2/5 of our bar is dedicated to illusion summoning, and usually the other 2/5 is some type of utility. Not much wiggle room. this is a design problem a lot of people complained about during the beta, but everyone has seemed to move on now.

The only skills that could absorb some of the power shift are blurred frenzy, mirror edge, mind stab, confusing images, chaos storm, and AA (and these moves already hit pretty hard); the rest of them have utility purposes (i.e magic bullet, temporal curtain, illusionary riposte, chaos armor). And, personally, I’d rather not have the majority of my damage be from AA because I don’t think a harder hitting blurred frenzy or mirror’s edge is going to ever be a reality.

Really, there’s no solution. You can either have the mesmer be more bursty or have phantasms be bursty. The advantage of the latter is that you can at least kill them quickly. Choose your poison.